Managing Moods with Yoga: A Workshop with Amy Weintraub

When you practice yoga, you don’t normally think about your emotions. But what if you tried to figure out how you were feeling beforehand and molded your practice to manage your mood. What if you created a practice that would make you feel more energized when you were depressed or would make you feel more focused when you were distracted. That’s just what Amy Weintraub showed us how to do during her yoga workshop, April 11-13, at Chicago Yoga Center.

During the three-day workshop, Amy offered a menu of yoga strategies to manage mood by using pranayama (breath control), images and sound.

“I’m not trying to fix them (participants) or change their yoga sequence, but I feel that I can give them some juicy ways of making their practice deeper, so that they can use their practice not only to manage their moods, but to awaken,” Amy said.

In 1989, Amy attended her first yoga class at the Kripalu Yoga Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, and became a yoga teacher. She is currently a senior Kripalu teacher and mentor. Amy is the author of Yoga for Depression and the founding director of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute, which leads professional certification trainings in LifeForce Yoga for Depression and Anxiety for mental health professionals and yoga teachers internationally.

The most important step in our yoga practice is to “create a safe container” on our mats, a place where we can “relax the armoring” we have, she said. Sometimes, especially with all of the vinyasa yoga styles that we practice, yogis never “slow down enough to be present” and get in touch with how they are feeling.
For many years before she discovered yoga, Amy suffered from depression. Practicing yoga eventually helped her to stop using of her antidepressant medication. Now she says, “I could not do my life if I didn’t practice every day. It’s about daily dosage to manage mood.”

Amy said yogis believe that depression comes “from ignorance of who we are…a false sense of separation” from the whole; in reality, we are “deeply and intimately connected” with everything. Depression, according to yogic philosophy, comes from “constricted prana (breath) and not enough energy.”

To help us work with a lack of energy and breath, Amy began the first night of the workshop by having us practice candle gazing. She said many people’s minds, especially those suffering from depression and anxiety, are so chaotic that to ask them to meditate on breath is very difficult.

The candle exercise is a good way “to give our mind a bone other than breath” and bring us into the present moment. Surprisingly for me, my mind was focused and was not attempting to go over the day’s events.

Now that our minds and breath were more relaxed, Amy gave us a simple, yet effective asana practice before our meditation. She had us sit cross-legged, make fists with our hands and hold them at our shoulders. We would lift our arms, inhale on the extension, and exhale with arms coming down, breathing forcefully through the nose. This energizing breath was called bhastrika, or bellows breath. She said this practice is good if you’re feeling lethargic and want to do some yoga practice. Afterward, she had us sit with our palms open and eyes closed. I could feel the energy pulsing through my hands, a good way to access the present moment.

To end that night, Amy had us practice alternative nostril breathing. If you breathe predominantly out of your right nostril, she pointed out, you activate your brain’s left hemisphere, meaning that you are probably smart, an achiever and think linearly, but in more extreme cases can suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. If you breathe primarily out of your left nostril, you are more creative and poetic but are more likely to suffer from depression. Breathing through the right nostril energizes, and breathing through the left calms. Amy suggested left-nostril breathing before bed and right-nostril breathing before a meeting.

The next day Amy helped us to recognize and manage our more lethargic moods by increasing our energy. For mood building, she had us do a self-inquiry exercise where we partnered with someone and lay in a comfortable position with a bolster under our backs and our legs in baddha konasana (knees bent with soles of the feet together). Our mat mate was instructed to ask in a whisper, “Who are you?”

We had to answer in one word, describing ourselves as our roles, like wife or writer, or our feelings, like happy or sad. When we stopped, the question would be asked again and the response noted. This was a difficult exercise because I kept contradicting myself. I’d say “I’m lightness,” then I’d say “I’m darkness,” or “I’m laughter,” then “I’m crying.” Amy explained afterward that this is a normal process of the brain, that if you say you are one way, your mind has to balance it out and say you are the opposite as well.

Following this exercise, our mat mate asked “What’s your heart’s desire?” We answered with only one or two desires. From this, Amy suggested creating a mantra. For example, if you wanted to bring more love into your life, make the mantra “I am love” and repeat it to yourself.

The practice was very moving for many of the participants; some of the yogis cried from being overcome by emotion. One woman said she appreciated being able to reveal so much of herself to a total stranger and have that person be so sympathetic.

Why is this exercise so important?

Amy says it helps people become aware that they aren’t defined by their emotions.
“They discover within themselves they are not their depression or their anxiety–that they are so much bigger,” she said. “They feel better about themselves.”

This observation was significant to me because many times when in the thick of sadness, anger or disappointment, I identify with the emotion and often feel it defines me. This exercise made me feel as though it was difficult to portray myself because it felt that there was so much more than words could describe.

We ended our practice that day with sivasana (relaxation) or yoga nidra (yogic sleep), lasting for about 20 minutes. Amy had us focus on specific parts of our bodies, starting on the left side and moving to the right. She guided us by saying, “feel the hollow in your hand,” and directed us to other parts of the body. After our bodies were fully relaxed, she had us remember a time that brought joy, either when we were in nature or with people we loved. Take that joy, she said, and allow it to flow through your body. By fully relaxing the body, I was able to re-live my memory and fully enjoy the sivasana.

Amy began the last day by having us practice laughing yoga, which seemed to loosen everyone up. Weintraub explained that studies have shown that lifting the corners of the mouth in a smile positively affects one’s mood. At many workshops, people seem a little nervous, but the laughing exercise eased the tension and brought everyone together. Weintraub had us look at one person, put our hands together over our hearts in namaste (prayer) position and start laughing. Although I expected everyone would end up fake-laughing, no one did–we couldn’t help cracking up. When I tried the laughing exercise in my yoga classes, it was also a success.

Then Amy helped us with techniques to manage anxiety, “When you’re anxious, you’re not clear and present.” The more restless or stressed we are, the harder it is to sit still, she explained.

To remedy this, she gave us a more vigorous yoga practice, to release nervous feelings, which incorporated sun salutations with chanting. During the sun salutations, we would chant na ma ha, meaning “honoring all the highest within us.”

I found Amy’s workshop meaningful because it made me realize it wasn’t just the asanas, the breath control or the meditation that I needed. The self-definition exercise, the desire-mantra exercise and knowledge that I am not my mood were also necessary, as they helped me obtain a new psychological and spiritual awareness of the deeper aspects of yoga.

As Amy clarified, “It’s not just the physical practice, it’s not just about the pranayama; it’s about clearing the space. And when we clear space, we’re awake and we can receive whatever life brings us.”

The workshop, so different from others, gave me more insight into my own practice as well as that of my students. Thanks to Amy, I now realize that by identifying the emotional aspects of ourselves, we, as yogis, can enhance our practice and create balance in our lives.

To visit Amy’s website, go to www.yogafordepression.com.

Elizabeth Kaufman teaches yoga at St. James Presbyterian Church in west Rogers Park and at Chicago Executive Sports & Fitness Center downtown. Her E-mail address is micbeth@sbcglobal.net.